Spanish submission to an unworthy despotism, and Spanish bigotry, were, therefore, not the results of the Inquisition and the modern appliances of a corrupting monarchy; but the Inquisition and the despotism were rather the results of a misdirection of the old religious faith and loyalty. The civilization that recognized such elements presented, no doubt, much that was brilliant, picturesque, and ennobling; but it was not without its darker side; for it failed to excite and cherish many of the most elevating qualities of our common nature,—those qualities which are produced in domestic life, and result in the cultivation of the arts of peace.
As we proceed, therefore, we shall find, in the full development of the Spanish character and literature, seeming contradictions, which can be reconciled only by looking back to the foundations on which they both rest. We shall find the Inquisition at the height of its power, and a free and immoral drama at the height of its popularity,—Philip the Second and his two immediate successors governing the country with the severest and most jealous despotism, while Quevedo was writing his witty and dangerous satires, and Cervantes his genial and wise Don Quixote. But the more carefully we consider such a state of things, the more we shall see that these are moral contradictions which draw after them grave moral mischiefs. The Spanish nation, and the men of genius who illustrated its best days, might be light-hearted because they did not perceive the limits within which they were confined, or did not, for a time, feel the restraints that were imposed upon them. What they gave up might be given up with cheerful hearts, and not with a sense of discouragement and degradation; it might be done in the spirit of loyalty and with the fervor of religious zeal; but it is not at all the less true that the hard limits were there, and that great sacrifices of the best elements of the national character must follow.
Of this time gave abundant proof. Only a little more than a century elapsed before the government that had threatened the world with a universal empire was hardly able to repel invasion from abroad, or maintain the allegiance of its own subjects at home. Life—the vigorous, poetical life which had been kindled through the country in its ages of trial and adversity—was evidently passing out of the whole Spanish character. As a people, they sunk away from being a first-rate power in Europe, till they became one of altogether inferior importance and consideration; and then, drawing back haughtily behind their mountains, rejected all equal intercourse with the rest of the world, in a spirit almost as exclusive and intolerant as that in which they had formerly refused intercourse with their Arab conquerors. The crude and gross wealth poured in from their American possessions sustained, indeed, for yet another century the forms of a miserable political existence in their government; but the earnest faith, the loyalty, the dignity of the Spanish people were gone; and little remained in their place, but a weak subserviency to the unworthy masters of the state, and a low, timid bigotry in whatever related to religion. The old enthusiasm, rarely directed by wisdom from the first, and often misdirected afterwards, faded away; and the poetry of the country, which had always depended more on the state of the popular feeling than any other poetry of modern times, faded and failed with it.
CHAPTER II.
Low State of Letters about the Year 1500. — Influence of Italy. — Conquests of Charles the Fifth. — Boscan. — Navagiero. — Italian Forms introduced into Spanish Poetry. — Garcilasso de la Vega. — His Life, Works, and Permanent Influence.
There was, no doubt, a great decay of letters and good taste in Spain during the latter part of the troubled reign of John the Second and the whole of the still more disturbed period when his successor, Henry the Fourth, sat upon the throne of Castile. The Provençal school had passed away, and its imitations in Castilian had not been successful. The earlier Italian influences, less fertile in good results than might have been anticipated, were almost forgotten. The fashion of the court, therefore, in the absence of better or more powerful impulses, ruled over every thing, and a monotonous poetry, full of conceits and artifices, was all that its own artificial character could produce.
Nor was there much improvement in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The introduction of the art of printing and the revival of a regard for classical antiquity were, indeed, foundations for a national culture such as had not before been laid; while, at the same time, the establishment of the University of Alcalá, by Cardinal Ximenes, and the revival of that of Salamanca, with the labors of such scholars as Peter Martyr, Lucio Marineo, Antonio de Lebrija, and Arias Barbosa, could hardly fail to exercise a favorable influence on the intellectual cultivation, if not on the poetical taste, of the country. Occasionally, as we have seen, proofs of the old energy appeared in such works as the “Celestina” and the “Coplas” of Manrique. The old ballads, too, and the other forms of the early popular poetry, no doubt, maintained their place in the hearts of the common people. But it is not to be concealed, that, among the cultivated classes,—as the Cancioneros and nearly every thing else that came from the press in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella sufficiently prove,—taste was at a very low ebb.
The first impulse to a better state of things came from Italy. In some respects this was unhappy; but there can be little doubt that it was inevitable. The intercourse between Italy and Spain, shortly before the accession of Charles the Fifth, had been much increased, chiefly by the conquest of Naples, but partly by other causes. Regular interchanges of ambassadors took place between the See of Rome and the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and one of them was a son of the poetical Marquis of Santillana, and another the father of Garcilasso de la Vega. The universities of Italy continued to receive large numbers of Spanish students, who still regarded the means of a generous education at home as inadequate to their wants; and Spanish poets, among whom were Juan de la Enzina and Torres Naharro, resorted there freely, and lived with consideration at Rome and Naples. In the latter city, the old Spanish family of Dávalos—one of whom was the husband of that Vittoria Colonna whose poetry ranks with the Italian classics—were among the chief patrons of letters during their time, and kept alive an intellectual union between the two countries, by which they were equally claimed and on which they reflected equal honor.[752]
But besides these individual instances of connection between Spain and Italy, the gravest events were now drawing together the greater interests of the mass of the people in both countries, and fastening their thoughts intently upon each other. Naples, after the treaty of 1503 and the brilliant successes of Gonzalvo de Córdova, was delivered over to Spain, bound hand and foot, and was governed, above a century, by a succession of Spanish viceroys, each accompanied by a train of Spanish officers and dependants, among whom, not unfrequently, we find men of letters and poets, like the Argensolas and Quevedo. When Charles the Fifth ascended the throne, in 1516, it was apparent that he would at once make an effort to extend his political and military power throughout Italy. The tempting plains of Lombardy became, therefore, the theatre of the first great European contest entered into by Spain,—a grand arena, in which, as it proved, much of the fate of Europe, as well as of Italy, was to be decided by two young and passionate monarchs, burning with personal rivalship and the love of glory. In this way, from 1522, when the first war broke out between Francis the First and Charles the Fifth, to the disastrous battle of Pavia, in 1525, we may consider the whole disposable force of Spain to have been transferred to Italy, and subjected, in a remarkable degree, to the influences of Italian culture and civilization.